


Rough Sketch

by Neffectual



Series: 104 Reasons to Stay Alive [14]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Artists, F/M, Female Hange Zoë, M/M, orisor inspired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-30
Updated: 2014-07-30
Packaged: 2018-02-11 00:48:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2046711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neffectual/pseuds/Neffectual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hanji is the official artist for the Survey Corps, but she doesn't always draw titans and battle strategies. Finding an old bundle of sketches brings back memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rough Sketch

**Author's Note:**

> This is a love poem to Mina's art, and not the Hanji/Mike smut she wanted. Because damn girl, you got skill.

There have always been those in the Survey Corps who draw; it’s not a pre-requisite, but it can be useful if you need someone to document events, so it is a talent highly prized among a group of people who live short, violent lives, and often need to hand over command because the one who held that post before is lying in the morgue – or worse, a titan’s belly. For their era, it has always been Hanji, grasping a split second to smudge charcoal across parchment and take in the tiny details of a situation, ready for those she affectionately calls ‘my meathead boys’ to have it explained to them later. She draws from reality, draws from memory, draws from fantasy, and her skill is unparalleled in their generation of the corps, capturing those around her and the manoeuvres which fail or succeed with perfect accuracy, and not an ounce of invention, despite that being her trademark. She knows the importance of correctly documenting events, and saves the inventiveness they all know she can impart for when it might be useful. But sometimes, she gets to draw for the sheer pleasure of it. So when they dig out an old pile of sketches they’ve found in a garrison they haven’t visited for maybe a decade, it’s unsurprising that all of them are Hanji’s.

When Levi looks back through Hanji’s sketches, he sees Farlan and Isabel, and has to bite his lip, whether to stop from laughing or crying, he doesn’t know. They all look so young and vibrant on paper, so alive, and it wounds Levi that they’re not standing behind him, laughing at how he hasn’t grown since these were drawn. He misses them painfully, fiercely, but when he looks at the drawings again, there’s a figure in the background he didn’t see at the time. Erwin is hovering in the back of every sketch, every doodle, and Levi wishes he’d paid attention to this at the time, because it would have saved a lot of awkward dancing around a few years later. Erwin is watching him like he wants to devour him whole, and can’t work out how to do so and still have Levi respect him in the morning. Levi could have told him that he’s never respected him to begin with.  
“You old pervert.” he says fondly to his lover, who has the grace to look embarrassed about getting caught, “Even then?”  
“Even then.” Erwin replies, then adds, awkwardly, “Isabel knew.”  
“Of course she did.” Levi says, and his voice is soft with recollection, “She always knew everything before me.”  
He remembers, now, how Erwin never leered at Izzy, not the way Nile had in training, and how he never commented when Farlan would kiss Levi’s head, never told them to stop touching each other in that casual way they shared, the casual way that Levi would later bring to this small group of four.

Levi points out another sketch, and Erwin looks carefully at it – young Captain Smith, all polished brass and squeaky shoes, boots barely high enough to pass regulations, and wonders when he ever looked so coltish, so obviously still growing into his limbs.  
“No wonder you laughed at me.” he says, and notices Levi’s face isn’t holding amusement, nor choking back a smile, but is instead, fond, soft, dreamy, “Or did that do it for you, my resemblance to a baby deer?”  
“Part of the appeal.” Levi says, absent-mindedly, and puts an arm around his waist. The rest of the sketches are similar, Erwin in new, clean uniform, Erwin taking drills, Erwin kneeling in a puddle to talk to Levi, like chivalry had lived on within him. It’s hard not to look at that young face and see naïveté, to see the way he was before the lines set in and age began to take the physique he worked so hard on. It’s also hard not to see where death has touched him already, where his eyes are hard and fixed on the horizon – when they’re not fixed on Levi. That’s something, at least, which hasn’t changed; he still watches Levi like a hungry fox watches a henhouse, although at least he’s stopped drooling these days. No matter what changes throughout the drawings, he is, and always has been, painfully, hopelessly in love with Levi.

For Mike, he can categorise their relationship through every drawing, whether he’s there at Erwin’s side, looking taller and broader, or if he’s sat around a campfire on a mission, the flames licking up and painting shadows on his face. The early drawings of him are half-formed, shirtless from the waist up but lacking detail, detail Hanji didn’t know until much later, and clearly didn’t trust herself to imagine. The later sketches are far more intimate, rumpled bed sheets keeping his modesty, just, although he notices Levi leering at one for a couple of seconds, because he’s a little shit. After those, though, a whole series which Mike could title ‘We Fucked, Then She Sketched’, there are later pictures, drawings of Mike in motion, moving on horseback, using his gear, things clearly drawn from memory and perfectly imperfect because of that – but the one thing which she never gets wrong is Mike.  
“You drew me a love poem.” he says, softly, and Hanji smiles over at him, quiet for once in the face of the truth, “Thanks.”

Hanji flicks through and looks at her art herself, a critical eye judging her shading and how she was obviously having an off day there unless Erwin has three legs and Levi has goat feet.  
“Hey, what do you know?” she says, grinning, and turns to wave a self portrait at the men behind her, “My boobs have got bigger since then.”  
“I keep trying to tell you that.” Mike says, quietly, and Hanji waves a hand at him, dismissing this.  
“Yes, dear, but when you talk, I can’t hear you over the voice in my head going ‘pretty, pretty, pretty’.” she says, and Levi sniggers. Mike rolls his eyes and rests his chin on the top of Hanji’s head, and she purrs and nuzzles into him. Erwin comes forward next and rests a hand on her shoulder, and she leans to kiss it gently, a mark of respect as well as love. Levi faceplants into her breasts, because he’s never been subtle about people he can actually tolerate, and she would expect nothing less from him. She pets his hair gently, and for a moment, it’s as if they’re all young again, like the years never passed and they’re not all old now, old for the corps, old for those who have faced so many battles. It feels safe, Hanji thinks, wrapped up in her meathead boys, who would be lost without her, and it feels like coming home.


End file.
